Abuse Law – Institutions – Cleveland Youth Detention Centre, QLD

In August 1998, the Queensland government established a Commission of Inquiry to examine whether there had been any abuse, mistreatment or neglect of children in Queensland institutions. This Inquiry was otherwise known as the ‘Forde Inquiry’. The Forde Inquiry had findings of incidents of unsafe, improper and illegal treatment of children in Queensland institutions (including Cleveland Youth Detention Centre), including incidents of sexual, physical, emotional and systems abuse.  

After a Four Corners report on a separate facility in the Northern Territory aired in July 2016, more claims of brutality by officers and staff emerged from Cleveland Youth Detention Centre.  

In July 2016, an ABC article provided that a former worker at Cleveland Youth Detention Centre claimed that “physical and emotional abuse was rife” at the centre. The former worker described an incident in 2012 in which she alleges a 15-year-old boy was involved in a physical altercation with a group of male staff. The former worker went on to state: 

“In the detention centre the things that you see — and it’s not only the physical abuse — the way that these big brutes of men will boast about how many young people they’ve smashed.” 

“They strip them of everything … they strip them of all their self-esteem.” 

Further in 2016, internal government reports that show footage of mistreatment of children at Cleveland Youth Detention Centre were released. In an ABC interview, it was said that the reports showed a “…culture of abuse and secrecy going back many years”. In this same interview, a former detainee reported that an officer spat in his food and that he was a regular victim of “take-downs” during his time at Cleveland Youth Detention Centre.  

Survivors of abuse at Cleveland Youth Detention Centre reported that their experiences at the centre left them traumatised beyond relief. 

We are specialist abuse lawyers and can help you receive acknowledgement, meaningful apology and financial resolution from those institutions and systems of power that failed to protect you from harm. If you would like advice in relation to a childhood or adult sexual, physical and/or psychological/emotional abuse claim in any jurisdiction in Australia, please reach out to the author, Emily Wright, at Littles Lawyers today. 

Further Abuse Law information written by our Emily Wright can be found on our website.